Somewhere over there

Since yesterday was the 80^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, for today’s earworm we’re having something that soldiers on both sides would have been listening to.

The song we know as “Lili Marlene” originated as a poem in the First World War (the one that was supposed to end all wars), written by a Hamburg schoolteacher conscripted into the German army, Hans Leip. It was set to music by Norbert Schultze in 1938 and recorded by a German singer, Lale Andersen, in 1939.

The gist of the piece is a lonely soldier on watch, missing his girlfriend. Pretty universal—I expect there was some Greek song around 520 BCE that expresses the same thoughts.

The song pretty much went nowhere until in 1941 German troops occupied Belgrade, in Yugoslavia, and needed recordings to broadcast over Radio Belgrade. Andersen’s “Lili Marlene” was one of the few discs the station had, so it got played a lot. And soldiers loved it.

But Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels loathed it. It wasn’t sufficiently martial—no proper German soldiers had time to miss their girlfriends or be anything but aggressively victorious. Besides, Andersen hung around with Jewish artists, which was not the done thing.

Still—soldiers within range of Radio Belgrade demanded more “Lili Marlene”. It expanded coverage to North Africa, where the British Eighth Army took it up. By the time Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches in 1944, it was on everyone’s playlist, and a standard for Marlene Dietrich’s USO performances. Vera Lynn also covered it.

(It's kind of interesting that a song with a male soldier's narrative seems only to have been covered by female singers.)

Today we’re going to go back to Lale Andersen’s version, the one that etched itself into the hearts of millions of men in all kinds of uniforms 80 years ago.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Eighty years on

This time around, the 80^th anniversary of the launching of Operation Overlord, we’re not seeing the news reporting as in commemorations past. Well, that’s partly due to the remaining participants being centenarians, probably. As well as to changes in journalism overall (prioritizing clicks over coverage), plus this being a presidential election year in a particularly circuslike atmosphere here in the States.

Plus—Republicans at this point are uncomfortable with the notion that the Big War was fought against fascists, so they’d just as soon forget about it.

But in thinking about it, I am reminded of one particular element, which didn’t make it into most of the reports in the past, but is, I think, a mark of how different things—and men—were then than they are now.

The Normandy landings had been planned with extraordinary thoroughness. I have always stood in shock and awe at the idea that men and women from several nations (not to mention many different military and government branches) put together the strategy, the intelligence, the logistics, the training, the communication plans to get more than 150,000 soldiers and all the necessary matériel from the south of England to the Normandy coast (and beyond).

And they did it without computers. Without whiteboards, if you please!

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had overall responsibility, of course. Not to mention the heavy burden of keeping rampaging egos like Montgomery and Patton somehow working as members of a team. These days we’d refer to it as herding cats, only those two were very big jungle cats with sharp claws and vicious teeth.

But here’s the detail I’m interested in at the moment. Despite all the meticulous planning of this particular operation, it is a primary maxim of military leadership that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. In this instance, the weather—critical to safe landing and ongoing support of several armies that were far from operational ports—was a particular crapshoot. The only guaranteed result from pulling the trigger on Overlord was that men were going to get killed. Success was just one possible outcome.

So, in addition to the official “D-Day is underway” proclamation, Eisenhower prepared an alternative announcement, the one in which he admitted that the landings had failed, he’d pulled back the troops and they would have to rethink the whole thing.

And he said, “The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

He wrote this out in pencil—alone, no SHAEF PR flunkies polishing it, no discussion with anyone in his chain of command—and he put it in his pocket until such time as it might be necessary to have it typed up and transmitted.

These days no one embarking on any crack-brained self-aggrandizing political or corporate or military scheme on someone else's dime even considers the remote possibility that it could go belly-up. (Looking at you, AI.) So (and probably because of that lack of forethought) when it (perhaps predictably) does go to hell in smithereens, after much behind-the-scenes scuffling and consulting of PR departments, crisis management companies, social media mavens, lawyers and other miscellaneous spin-doctors, a statement is issued in which someone grudgingly admits that “mistakes were made”, but the makers of those alleged mistakes are never named. And they are certainly never the persons reading the statement to the news outlets, Congressional committees or The View.

I am not a fan of the uncritical gushing about “The Greatest Generation” that has occurred since Tom Brokaw wrote his paean. The men and women blooded by the Great Depression indeed made the enormous sacrifices they were called upon to make during the years 1939-1945. And I am deeply grateful that they did. But I don’t see how it was somehow a greater sacrifice than what was asked for in the years 1914-1918.

(And if you want to talk military service, do not even try to tell me that the men and women who went to Vietnam were somehow lesser beings than the ones who went to Iwo Jima or Anzio or the Hürtgen Forrest. They suffered from bad military and political leadership and lack of strategy, not from any moral deficit.)

However—when I compare this scratched-out pencil draft of Eisenhower’s intent to accept full responsibility for the failure of Overlord with any no-fault statements made by politicians, generals or corporate executives caught in everything from flagrante delicto to global embezzlement and multiple manslaughter, it is clear to me that something indeed changed in the intervening 80 years.

 

And not for the better.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

I can do this

For about three weeks, I’ve had first muscular discomfort and then muscle/joint pain in my left hip. It started with something behind the pelvic blade, then moved deep into the glute and finally attacked the ball and socket. Having had way too many interactions with orthopods in the previous two years, I tried toughing it out for much longer than I should, but eventually caved.

Saw the doctor yesterday and the diagnosis is bearable: trochanteric bursitis, caused by chronic tendonitis. Treatment: a cortisone shot to reduce the inflammation and physical therapy to, you know, do the usual. Prescription-strength NSAID as backup.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am about this. I’d nearly convinced myself that this pain, which greatly limited my mobility and flexibility, would be my future, and now it’s just an episode.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Sizing up

The couple ahead of me in line at the Weird Brothers coffee house the other day had quite the complicated order to place, so I had some time to examine their attire. At first, his tee-shirt seemed normal—I was just trying to think where Currituck might be. (Outer Banks, North Carolina.)

But then I realized this:

Evidently they don’t wash new articles of clothing before wearing them. (Or remove the size tags.)

Huh.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Civic duty

Today’s a big one: I’m so grateful that the criminal justice system—with all its flaws—worked, and that 12 ordinary citizens of Manhattan stepped up to the plate, guided with patience and professionalism by a judge, and convicted the Kleptocrat on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to influence the 2016 election.

These 12—and six alternates—sat through six weeks of mostly tedious and sometimes tawdry testimony, paying attention to all of it, while the defendant pouted and dozed and frowned and growled his contempt for the proceeding. They did their civic duty; they rendered their verdict based on their understanding of the judge’s instructions and the evidence presented. They deserve our thanks and respect for that.

It was an extraordinary case, with extraordinary precautions—jurors remained anonymous because of the very real danger of threats to them by TFG and his toadies all up and down the food chain. (The number of Republican legislators, many of whom hold law degrees, who have decried the verdict as a travesty is appalling.) Imagine—a criminal trial of a former president with the kinds of precautions normally only seen when mobsters are in the dock.

The calls to dox and harass the jurors began shortly after the end of the trial.

We live in strange times; no doubt about it. And there is danger all around us. I need to be clear: the legal system is not going to save us. We have to do that at the polls in November. But today I am grateful that a dozen men and women stood up for all of us in a court of law and held a criminal accountable for his actions. That’s not nothing.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Robbin' people with a six-gun

Okay, I had another song lined up for today, but the breaking news yesterday afternoon that a Manhattan jury took less than a full day to convict Cadet Bonespurs on all 34 felony counts of fraud changed my tune.

So today’s earworm has to be The Clash singing “I Fought the Law”.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Whale of a tale

For a few months there’ve been stories in the news about orcas attacking smallish boats off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It wasn’t just a single incident, but multiple events where the killer whales rammed yachts and fishing boats; in some instances, they sank the craft.

Initially there were theories that some yahoos on a yacht had pointlessly injured an orca, and that word spread among the pods, resulting in coordinated attacks on anything that vaguely resembled the offending vessel.

I mean—orcas can be assholes, no doubt about it. You don't want to get between a hungry killer whale and a seal. It'll crush you, your boat and all your hopes in a New York instant, and won't ever show a sign of remorse.

But now there’s been A Study, and it may be that orcas—specifically the teenaged orcas—are merely playing with Things Hanging Off Boats, like rudders. Playing in the sense that they ram them until they break off and then they can toss it amongst themselves like dribbling a basketball. This was exacerbated by the rise in numbers of their food source, bluefin tuna, so they didn’t have to spend all the hours God sends finding lunch; they had time on their hands and got bored.

It apparently turns out that, absent organized after-school activities, gangs of teenagers just do what gangs of teenagers do. Human, orca—whatever.

But wait—there’s more.

It also seems that orca teens—even without TikTok and Instagram—create and follow fads. Viz: in 1987, juvenile killer whales in the Pacific Northwest started swimming around with dead salmon on their heads. It was all the rage, like Swatch watches and mullets on land.

But here’s the thing: the dead salmon hat thing spread to adult orcas, and then the trend died out.

Teenagers be like: “Well, now the olds are doing it, so it’s all ruined.”

Sounds about right.

©2024 Bas Bleu

Little growing things

I’ve been composting kitchen scraps for about five years now. I use one of the 48-ounce Costco Greek yoghurt tubs to dump scraps, coffee grounds and used tea leaves until there’s enough to take out to the composter. That’s a bifurcated closed bin that you can rotate to keep things stirred up until it’s ready to be emptied out to amend the mostly clay soil in my garden.

I occasionally add leaves in the autumn and shredded paper the rest of the year for the “brown” component.

I must not have been rotating enough about a month ago, because when I went out to add some food waste, I found something growing. A lot of something growing.

I don’t know what it was, but it’s been whirled into the mix now.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Under the seal

I have a Costco membership for several reasons. One is that gas prices are always 20 or 30 cents lower than in the Ville. Also, I buy butter by the four-pound block for my various baking endeavors. I start getting nervous when the supply in my freezer drops below 12 pounds.

But I also get my Greek yoghurt from Costco—Greek yoghurt costs way more than regular and it’s considerably cheaper than the supermarkets or Trader Joe’s. Moreover, it lasts a long time (look—yoghurt is essentially milk that’s already gone bad when you buy it), so buying it in 48-ounce tubs is cost effective for me.

Also—fewer trips out to get it.

But here’s something that’s a little unusual about my most recent purchase:

A little flower from the dairy gods.

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Memorial Day

It seems appropriate that Memorial Day is a Monday gratitude day, because it’s the day we’re meant to reflect upon the sacrifices of the men and women who defend our country.

You know—to express gratitude in some way for their willingness to trade their lives for the security of our society.

I feel better about this than I have in four years, because we now have a president who isn’t hell-bent on screwing the armed services, stealing money meant for their housing and social welfare programs to build a pointless border wall, using them as background props for self-aggrandizing photo ops and dissing them as losers and suckers when required to visit a military cemetery.

As a military historian with a focus on the human element of conflict, it’s always been clear to me that the real cost of war isn’t the treasure, it’s the blood. It’s the sons and daughters who go into harm’s way and never return, or who return so altered as to never really find their way back. As we reflect upon those costs, we really ought to consider the suicide rate of combat veterans; per Department of Veterans Affairs figures, 17.5 veterans killed themselves every day in 2021. That’s 6392 per year. I’m not going to talk about drug and alcohol addiction or homeless rates resulting from PTSD; they’re line items on the butcher’s bill, too.

I wonder what that says about our society that we send these people out to do terrible things on our behalf and then essentially shrug our shoulders and avert our eyes when they come back not in bandbox tiptop condition? Kinda feels like a broken contract to me.

Memorial Day marks the “official” start of summer in the US; rather like acknowledging the dead who made possible the picnics and fireworks of Independence Day. I would like to hope that this year marks the beginning of a national recognition of the real—human—price of wars and a genuine movement to address that price. I have no expectations that Republicans will do this—not even eye-patched combat survivor glory hounds; homeless vets don’t make campaign contributions. (Not like aerospace corporations, anyhow.) But we’re better than Rs, aren’t we? A true expression of heartfelt gratitude ought to include what Abraham Lincoln referred to as work “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him that shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan”.

At least, that’s what my gratitude means.

©2024 Bas Bleu